The Dutch designer of Chairman! – a 200 lbs. levitating office chair designed to give CEOs ‘special powers’ – has debuted his latest obsession, the Soap Box Racer. Marijn van der Poll’s custom designs are cars stripped to their essence, the “realization of boyhood dream” of taking to the road in an open one-seater, the wind in your hair as the asphalt rushes by. Marijn describes the automobile in enthusiastic terms, as a “beautiful symbol of technology and freedom.”

More than any other invention, the automobile has a tremendous cultural meaning, one that is surprisingly resilient. The locomotive, the lightbulb, computer – these things are now just everyday objects, but the car; that’s something special.

While Marijn van der Poll has a fully-working prototype of his Soap Box Racer for sale (current price is 20,000 euros) I built my own non-polluting car two summers ago for about $80. I am also asking for 20,000 euros; you can pick the car up in my parents’ garage.

Link to Marijn van der Poll. Soap Box Racer is under “Drive.”

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See Also: Art in an age of mechanical reproduction,Facebook and UI,The Epson Diet,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Goodman on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 5:21 am and is filed under Design, Technology, Vestal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.